EF1 tornado in Cobb County, Georgia

As a line of strong to severe thunderstorms moved through the west Atlanta metropolitan area and into southwest Cobb county, a brief tornado spun up near the intersection of Oak Ridge Rd and Oak Ridge Pkwy SW, which is about a half-mile to the north of I-20. The tornado immediately caused damage to the 18 Wheeler Truck Parts & Chrome building, causing a portion of an exterior wall to collapse. A door was open on the back side of the building, providing a failure point as tornado winds entered the building. The tornado moved northeastward across Ivy Pointe Row SW and Ivy Log Dr SW, where several large and tall trees were snapped and caused damage to roofs and walls of homes. The tornado then turned east-northeast, bringing down additional trees onto Ivy Log Dr SW, Maple Log Pl SW, and Poplar Log Pl SW. Two homes on Poplar Log Pl SW sustained major damage as large trees fell on the home, removing portions of the roof and walls, which were then tossed by the tornado winds. The tornado then turned east-southeastward, uprooting several trees on Hembree Ln SW and Blair Bridge Rd SW, once again falling on homes and causing structural damage. The tornado continued onto William Rd, snapping and uprooting about a dozen trees before finally lifting and dissipating over Myra Ln SW.

A line of strong thunderstorms moved into north and central Georgia during the afternoon through the evening on Thursday, January 12th and spawned numerous tornadoes, including several that were long track and significant. Ahead of this line, a few supercells also spawned tornadoes in portions of central and eastern Georgia. Upon further examination of radar data and high resolution areal imagery, it was found that several tornadoes rotated around and within a larger vortex and caused the widespread damage in the area near Griffin GA, over 2 miles wide in some cases.

The result was that as many as 4 tornadoes were on the ground simultaneously in SW Spalding County, which were rotating around the larger circulation, merging together in several cases and crossing paths. The presence of 3 mergers was identified in the reanalysis. Additional analysis revealed that wind speeds in the EF3 storm reached

as high as 155mph or high end EF3. This confirmed a total of 14 tornadoes, including 10 which resulted from the same storm/larger mesocyclone.